A Bigger Field Awaits Us: The Scottish Football Team That Fought the Great War by Andrew Beaujon ISBN: 0897337360
Published by Chicago Review Press on May 1, 2018
Genres: Biographies and Memoirs, Unit Histories
Pages: 288
Tells the story of eleven Scottish football players and their fans who volunteered for the 16th Royal Scots Battalion in November 1914. Seven months later the battalion lost 80 percent of its 800-plus men during the nearly-five-month-long Battle of the Somme. In May 1918 the battalion was disbanded to provide its 400 soldiers as replacements for other units.
A Bigger Field is not a narrow examination of a famous battle viewed through the lens of one infantry battalion. It reads like a work of fiction but is an excellent short history of the Somme offensive with well-placed photos throughout the text.
Beaujon covers political maneuverings, sneaky journalists, early motion pictures, 1,700 footballs sent to British soldiers held in German prisoner-of-war camps, the war beyond 1916 including the Battle of Arras in April 1917 where the battalion’s operational strength was under 300 officers and men, and postwar myth making and cover ups such as the British Ministry of Information that was disbanded in November 1918 and all its records destroyed.
A wonderful, unexpected book.
Reviewed by Dana Lombardy, publisher of WWOI
